Friday 17 February 2012

Goal setting

Miss Haribo here.

As mentioned before, and will surprise no one who knows me, I love graphs, statistics and tracking my progress. I also love giving myself a reward when I achieve a goal.

Theoretically achieving a goal should be motivation enough but sometimes we all need a little bit of extra help. Not only are rewards a good motivation but they can actually help us believe that we enjoyed something that would be a bit unpleasant.

This stems from a fairly classic experiment in psychology, in which subjects did a boring task and then got paid to lie and then tell someone else how much fun the task was. Once this was done those paid a small amount to then actually reported to the experimenter that they liked the task, while those paid a lot were happy to admit that it was totally boring. This sounds crazy but it has a simple explanation: those paid only a small amount to lie  had to somehow justify the lie to their brain and convince themselves that they had actually enjoyed the task.(http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Festinger/ )

So when I give myself a reward for sticking to something I don't like very much I try to make sure the reward is small. For example my 'reward' for going to Fight Klub at 7am on a Friday was that I would be allowed to read Grazia on the bus.  It actually helps me to reprogram my brain to convince me that I like something. So not only is 7am Fight Klub not painful, but it's something I actively enjoy!

Miss Haribo
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